I haven't really gotten to do anything to terribly spontaneous in quite a while, so it was surreal, yet refreshing, when I decided to fly to Anchorage for the evening on a whim.

Ok, so it wasn't necessarily JUST a whim, but I had been looking at things on craigslist.com - specifically seeking round pen fencing for a bargain, which so far has been unsuccessful - when I came across a 2006 Yamaha FZ-6 (a 600cc street motorcycle) that looked IDEAL for Dad for his birthday. I went sprinting to Mom's office to show it to her, and while her reaction was less than ecstatic, there seemed to be no dissuading me, so she finally relented and Caroline and I got tickets to Anchorage leaving at 5pm.

Upon arriving, we met up with some Tanacross buddies and grabbed some dinner, then headed out to look at the bike. I'll spare you the long story and description of the various examinations we did on the bike, but in the end I wound up opting not to buy it for various reasons. Mildly disappointing, as I was quite excited and pretty much planning to buy it, but the trip was fun, I learned some new things about assessing used merchandise (specifically automotive merchanidise) prior to purchase, and I got to make a spontaneous trip to Anchorage!

All in all, I don't regret it at all, and the more I think about it, the happier I am with the decision not to buy the motorcycle. Perhaps we'll find a better one at a later date...

I just read through this blog from the beginning, and I'm disheartened to discover that I kept logging that I was trying to lose weight and trying to lose weight and trying to lose WEIGHT and all that has resulted is that I've gotten heavier... and heavier... and heavier. What's wrong with me? I lead a fairly active life! I'm not sedentary! I don't eat THAT badly! Weird...

All the observations of the ups and downs of married life are also interesting. We're still working on stuff, but I think we've come up with some new methods and approaches that are really working, so, at least currently, we are happy.

Otherwise, I've still got the bug engine to rebuild, I've got the R-1 engine to rebuild, I've got Tucker to train, and a subwoofer to install in my truck. Life is busy... but the house is SO clean! I got some various organizational furniture and found places for things and not it is not only clean, it is easy to keep clean! So I'm quite stoked about that, as is Will. Just that much less stress to have to deal with.

He actually just left this morning to head back up to the North Slope for his 2 weeks of work, so I am on my own again. I miss him, but I plan to make this time to myself a time to focus on the R-1 and on my workout/eating regimen to see if I can't just lose SOME weight. If I can just get it so I'm actually LOSING anything, I'll feel so much better... I'd love to see the 5lb loss in 2 weeks like I did so long ago before the wedding...

Well, Will and Dad have now started putting together the floor of the cabin-to-be out at the lake. It's interesting seeing a construction project going on like that in February in Alaska, but the plus side is that it is currently 40° and GORGEOUS outside here! Really strange weather for February, but still great. So that at least is helping on the construction front.

Other than that exciting news, not much new to report here. Just living and tryin' to have some fun in the (until recently) frozen north!

I have a theory: it is a fact that the female chromosome combination is xx, and the male combo is xy - I believe these combinations are what lead to the differences between men and women, and the differences between various men and those between various women. Essentially, x is the female, and she always says that life is "x", and the male, y, says just that: "why??" When two x's are combined, most of the time they agree "Life is just totally 'x'!" "I know, right?"

But then, typically about one week a month, they HATE each other. "Life is totally the right side 'x'! If you weren't a leftist moron, you'd realize that!" "You are totally the inferior 'x'!" And on it goes.

Then, when x and y are combined, various results can occur. If the y is very dominant and the x is rather submissive, the resulting man is very masculine and domineering. However, if x is one of the strong, assertive types, he is generally more respectful and understanding of women. When the x chromosome is very strong and dominant and it gets combined with a rather whiney sumbissive y, you wind up with a gay guy.

Sometimes, as I believe might be my case, you initially get an x and y chromosome pair, but the x is in a mood and wants nothing to do with y other than to thoroughly emasculate him, so she tears his tail off, bends it, and sews it back on to make him another x. So you wind up with me, who thinks about these things in depth first thing in the morning.

Almost Tanacross Time!
Woohoo! It's May 17, and the first Tanacross of the year is this weekend! At least I still fit my racing leathers - my street leathers, at least the pants, don't fit right now. *sigh* And I'm far heavier than I'd like, but such is life and I must deal. Gotta keep at it at the gym and hope for the best, I guess. At least I'm finally excited about racing again. Been a few years of just wishing we had more time for the house. Now the house is "done" and so we can just go have fun.This isn't going to be a very coherent entry; it probably will include a lot rambling that makes only marginal sense... Caroline and I were up past midnight last night at Trademark printing the sleeves for the Tanacross shirts. They're gonna look really nice, but it's yet another reminder that I'm old. Got to bed at 1:30, and I'm a zombie today... so I think I'll sign off for now...

Summer's approaching!
The temperature is finally getting up into the 50's on a fairly regular basis, the snow is melting, and BOY am I getting antsy for summer! Between my impatience to start riding my motorcycle and my hesitance to go horseback riding while the driveway is still so icy, I am about ready to take a hair dryer to the remaining snow and ice! The thing is, I need to get into DMV to get my FZ title transferred into my married name (forgot to do that...), get its registration renewed, pull the VW into the garage and start getting it set up to be my summer car, get that registered and insured, pull the GSX-R into the garage and start seeing if we can figure out what's wrong with it to see if we can get it running for Will to race this year (who knows)... there is so much to do in the next weeks! Lordy... But, it's pretty out :)

Contemplation of Life
Hmm... their little "mood" emoticons do not have the breadth of expression that my current mood requires...

I have come to the conclusion that, even if you're married, coexisting, somewhat co-reliant, etc., you generally must, within reason, live for yourself. Obviously, it is not reasonable to spend any money you want to if it is not somehow adherent to the current budget, or is simply unaffordable at present; but if you go through life letting others tell you what you can and cannot do, or if you allow others to continuously shoot down your ideas and dreams, you will never live your life to its full potential, and you will eventually grow old and look back with disappointment on your unlived existence... no one knows you and your personal capabilities or limitations better than you do, and if you let them believe that they are the resident expert on you, you will only set yourself up to fail.

I do not mean to ramble, but life baffles me... you're led to believe that you can be so close to a person as to want to marry them, and they should always believe in you and encourage you - you would never expect to have to fight them to let you believe in yourself. A rather sad statement on humanity, I must say...

Excellent Vacation
Well, Caro and I just got back from our wonderful vacation in Washington, where we visited family, relaxed a lot, saw a Christina Aguilera concert (you will find a full description on my Christina Aguilera Fan Page), and generally had a great time.

We rented a car, which turned out to be a relatively sporty, and very fun, Chevy Cobalt.

We started out in Bellingham hanging out with our cousin Laura for the first weekend - had a blast hanging out with her and all her fun friends - and from there we went north to Vancouver, B.C. for the Christina Aguilera concert.

That definitely rocked. Then we headed south to Camas on Tuesday to visit our grandparents and see Aunt Dee

and Aunt Marylin

while we were there. We baked the precription batch of cookies for Grandpa to help his leg heal (the doctors just told him he could start walking around the house without his boot on - I'm sure that wouldn't be the case without the cookie dough!), and read books, played pinochle and spades, and just relaxed. It was wonderful.

We also went to dinner with a couple of Caro's college friends (Leah and Thuy), of whom I HAD pictures until I idiotically wondered what "format memory card" did on my digital camera... *sigh* so those pictures are gone... The weather cooperated wonderfully, ending our week with lovely sunny days bringing temperatures of high 60's to low 70's. 'Twas wonderful... Then we headed east

to Sunnyside to visit Ida, who teaches high school French there, and also is working on training her horse, Dash.

Isn't she purty? She's really sweet, too...

Ida also has a very nice new trailer - two-horse slant, tack door, twin axles with electric brakes...

She is renting a cute, fairly cozy little place a little ways out of town

(that's Annabell up front - huge fuzzball that she is...), and she showed off her lovely piano for us

At the ranch where Dash is boarded, we met Brenda's soon-to-be new horse (whose name escapes me) - a lovely Arab/Paint cross,

and a little, very vocal, donkey named Leroy

While there, we had to go out for St. Patty's Day, during which outing we met Laura

as well as some random guy whose name, I believe, was Mario. He bought Ida a shot

and then was gone. Whatever. Ida was good entertainment for us

and made us sing karaoke

ok so she didn't MAKE us, but we did anyway. It was dismal... Mary Jane's Last Dance has never been so tuneless, I daresay...

We ended the night in a supposedly Irish bar in Yakima that was OUT of Guiness on SAINT PATRICK'S DAY. Irish? I think not...

*Sigh*
Well, I was just reading through the saga that has been my various blogs since their inception, which was interesting. Realized that I had never mentioned that I have TWO horses now, at least, not within the "Life After..." blog. Started my lease-to-own on Tucker back in November06. She's a very cool horse - 5 years old, over 16hh, black and white tobiano paint, and totally gorgeous! So that's the new animal on the property. Will and I have been dealing with the usual ups and downs of life, I guess you could call them... they've sucked... marriage is hard... but I think things are starting to get better. Since he's working days now and we're not building the house anymore, we have time to just sit down and work on things and get to really know each other again. But that's been a lot of work, and rather tiring. It has been nice being done with the house. I broke out the bread machine last night that I got for Christmas from the fam - made the lovely Quasimodo loaf that so far seems relatively tasteless... oops! Guess I need to work with it more and try to figure out how to actually correctly use the machine. Then I can have home-baked bread on a regular basis!I have a membership at a local gym now, which is very necessary as I was reading through the early posts in this journal and I was complaining about being 191 lbs. HA. I'm now fluctuating up and down in the vicinity of 205. I have plenty of muscle, but just too much irritating weight hanging out on me that won't go away! Bet the cookies I bake don't help... but it's been COLD! What can you DO when it's cold but BAKE??